President Obama has been on the stump trying to cobble together a coalition that will help keep him in the White House. It matters little what damage his actions might do to America, he has bigger plans and needs more “flexibility” to get them done.

On college campuses he is trying to gin up support by making the interest rate on college loans a campaign issue. The issue is government subsidized Stafford loans. He wants to freeze the current interest rates at 3.4% and he wants the Republicans to fight him on this so that he can create another class warfare wedge issue.

Where have we seen something like this before? Wasn’t the government’s heavy involvement in housing, pushing for everyone to be a homeowner that led to the housing bubble? When that bubble burst, all hell broke loose with it and Obama was able to ride the gush of air into the White House.

Think about the growing debt being accumulated by college students and think about their job prospects in the Obama economy. It is not a pretty picture. What happens if those students upon graduating say, “I can’t find a decent job. I have been duped. I’m not paying back my student loans.” What do you do? Jail them?

Now if interest rates climb, the economic effect will be to curtail borrowing, that is, the old price, supply and demand thing. But if interest rates are kept low, then the demand for more debt will not be curtailed. If the demand for more debt is not curtailed the bubble grows. Four more years of Obama managing the economy will not be a boon to jobs. If we haven’t figured that out yet, we better start studying quickly. There’s a big test coming in November.

I fully appreciate the college financing issue. But the education model is broken. Colleges seem to raise tuition in lock step with increases in government aid, so no progress is made. Colleges also seem to be afraid of not attracting enough students so they fill their course catalogs with nonsense courses that will interest no employer. The amount of debt piling up is frightening, but hey, we have a president to reelect. We’ll fix that later; just like Social Security, Medicare, budget deficits…

The Republicans are right to at least demand cuts in spending elsewhere to pay for this. They know the problem won’t get fixed or even addressed with Obama at the helm. We have to hang on for another six or seven months to cancel Obama’s contract and then prepare to roll up our sleeves and undo the damage he has done.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

I just got my latest e-mail update from Congressman Tim Bishop and one cannot help but just shake his head. He leads off by mentioning his bogus survey, and tells the reader how (surprise!) people are concerned about taxes. Of course that is when Tim Bishop loses his way again.

You see Tim Bishop is a big supporter of the payroll tax cut. He is also a big supporter of big spending and big government. So let’s examine this closely. What is the purpose of the payroll tax? In the structure of the great Ponzi scheme that it is, the payroll tax goes to fund Social Security checks and Medicare. So a payroll tax takes away revenue from these programs. To put it another way, Tim Bishop is saying, “Let’s raid the piggy bank of today’s retirees and hand the bill to our children and grand children.” They will have to pay more than they did before because not only must they support the baby boomers who are now retiring they will have to make up the shortfall from this cut in funding. Tim Bishop is actually bragging about this.

Class Warfare

He then goes into the class warfare riff, about how nobody likes to pay taxes, that Republicans want to balance the budget on the backs of middle class taxpayers, etc. Okay, let’s talk about fairness. How fair is it that 47% of income earners pay no income tax? How politically dangerous would it be if that number increases to greater than 50%, such that the majority of voters pay no taxes, but the minority is demanded to pay more? Is that fair? Is that America?

“That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.” – James Madison, March 29, 1792, Essay on Property

But who do you want to believe? James Madison, the father of the Constitution, or Tim Bishop? It is income taxes, not payroll taxes, that go to the funding of the federal government. Tim Bishop attacks any curtailment of income taxes but makes not a peep about curtailment of runaway spending. No, we need to spend more on Solyndra, on bailouts, on Fannie and Freddie, on the Department of Education! We need to tax, tax, tax, he says.

He then attacks the Ryan budget. This is from a man whose party has not passed a budget, as required by law, in the Senate in nearly three years. This is from a man whose party leader, the president, has seen his budget go down in  a Democrat controlled senate 97-0, and he attacks Paul Ryan’s plan? What’s Tim Bishop’s plan? Oh, that’s right, stop the outsourcing of call centers overseas. That will get the economy humming.

He specifically attacks broadening the tax base.

“Base-broadening” is a Washington term for eliminating some of the credits and deductions that help middle-class families own a home, send their children to college, and afford healthcare.

No, Tim, broadening the tax base means getting more people into the workforce as taxpayers. Get it? Broadening the base, not squeezing more out of it. After squandering nearly a trillion dollars on the stimulus that promised us unemployment would not rise above 8%, it has not been below 8% since then. That is the worst record since the Great Depression, but of course that was all Bush’s fault.

It’s time to realize the hope and change experiment is over. It is time to get back to the principles of the founders which make this country great for over two centuries. It’s time to get rid of the politicians who keep throwing sand in the gears in the form of mountains of regulations. It is time to shrink government back to where it protected our rights and liberties rather than took them away to substitute them with the collective wisdom of politicians like Tim Bishop.

Tim Bishop says we need more spending, more stimulus, more debt, no solutions. I say, no more. 2012, the end of an error.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

I just got a survey request from my Congressman Tim Bishop. I started to fill it out but it was limited in its responses. Limited to what could easily be tabulated and put into a self-serving graph, but the same limited responses also spoke volumes.

He introduced his survey with two wishes:

I’d like to know how you think Congress can best help your family this year.

I hope you will take a moment to tell me what you believe my priority should be in Congress for 2012.

The first question tells all about what is wrong with Tim Bishop’s thinking, Barack Obama’s thinking, and why we are heading off a cliff. So let me answer the question. Tim, get a copy of the Constitution. Go to a quiet room; sit down and read it. If you don’t immediately grasp the meaning of the document you took an oath to support, may I recommend you buy a copy of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, it will help explain it to you. It is not Congress’ job to help my family. That is my job. Congress’ job is primarily to defend our borders (think Mexico), interact with foreign nations, and to regulate commerce between the states and with foreign nations; to coin money, not print it without end so that it becomes increasingly worthless (see Bernanke); provide a federal court system and that’s about it. Everything else is left to the states and to the people (see Amendment 10).

To answer the Congressman’s second question, I would say, Tim, stop doing everything else. Stop spending money like there is no tomorrow because there is a tomorrow and my children, and yours too, will have to pay all this debt back. There is no one to bail out the United States of America.

If Barack Obama wanted to be a venture capitalist, perhaps he should have applied for a job at Bain Capital. It is not his job, nor yours, to gamble our tax dollars on your favorite pet project. It is not your job to tell Boeing where they can or can’t locate their factories.

Before I could stop myself I clicked on the link to get to the actual survey and here were Congressman Bishop’s choices:

• Lowering taxes for the middle class
• Access to affordable higher education
• Caring for our veterans when they return home
• Investing in transportation and water infrastructure
• Creating incentives for companies to insource jobs
• Other (where he provides a tiny box to type in your own priority

Let me take them one at a time.

• Lowering taxes for the middle class – Who decides where the middle class begins and ends? Where in the history of this country has class warfare led to greatness? We are perilously close to the point where the majority will pay no federal taxes but will have the power to demand from the minority that they provide and pay for whatever they want. Of course, I expect Congressman Bishop to shoot back that everyone pays payroll taxes. Payroll taxes do not fund the operation of the federal government. In the case of Social Security everyone who pays in expects to get every dollar back and then some. It is a lousy savings plan not a tax that funds government. Medicare/Medicaid is similar in that everyone expects to get it back in the form of free health care if they become impoverished or when they reach sixty-five years of age.
• Access to affordable higher education – This is building the next bubble. At some point students who graduate will not be able to afford to pay their skyrocketing college debts and will default and we will be forced to pick up the tab. Every time the federal government offers scholarship money, say, $1000 to students, you can bet colleges will increase tuition by $1000 shortly thereafter. Higher education is ripe for a new paradigm.
• Caring for veterans when they return home — I would bundle this under providing for the national defense and since that is included in the Constitution that is a legitimate function of the federal government.
• Investing in transportation and water infrastructure — the government doesn’t invest in anything, they spend money. The left which is constantly trying to hide what they are really doing stopped calling spending, spending because it was out of control. By calling it investing, they thought it had a degree of sophistication about it. When you invest in something you expect to get all your money back and a decent rate of return on it as well. We pay gasoline taxes that are supposed to pay for the roads and bridges that are falling down. Where is that money? What happened to it? Secondly, this is not a federal function. Every state has (or should) have taxes on gasoline or tolls on roads to maintain them. Someone in Maine shouldn’t be paying taxes to fix roads in Hawaii. If every state should take care of its own roads and water needs. If a bridge or road or river goes between two states, those two states can join forces to manage those joint properties, it doesn’t require Washington’s meddling. Of course, Tim Bishop will plead that the General Welfare clause of the Constitution calls for such meddling. Not true and here’s why (click for an explanation).
• Creating incentives for companies to insource jobs — This one is simply Tim Bishop’s manufactured campaign issue against his likely opponent. It is not the job or the talent of the federal government to pick winners and losers. Does Tim Bishop really want to send the thousands of auto worker jobs from Toyota, Nissan, and Honda back to Japan? BMW back to Germany? Chrysler jobs to Italy (Chrysler is now owned by Fiat of Italy)? Or does he just want to make American firms uncompetitive and force them to lay off workers. It was a study at Dartmouth University that showed that for every job outsourced overseas, two new jobs were created in America. So why does Tim Bishop want to do the exact opposite of what might actually create jobs here and lower unemployment (Hint: he thinks he can fool the people into reelecting him)

Nothing could be clearer than if we want to get America back on track, this kind of thinking has to go. If I have a problem that government is causing, I want to go first to the mayor of my village, next to the supervisor of my town, then the county executive of my county, then the governor of my state. I don’t need to try to hack through the massive bureaucracy of Washington to get anything done and Tim Bishop is only one of 435 representatives. Why would any sane person want to give away that much control to Washington?

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Congress passed yet another extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits. The Republicans did it to take the political issue off the table for the election. Tim Bishop and the Democrats passed it because they think it is good governing.

Payroll taxes are for a very specific purpose, to fund Social Security and Medicare, the two entitlement programs that are growing at a dangerous rate. So, hey, what better idea than to take money away from them. Let’s look at it very simply.

Suppose there was no Social Security and instead everyone had individual retirement plans and were contributing the same amount to those plans that they currently pay into Social Security. In tough times, maybe you scale back those contributions, but you fully realize that there will be an impact down the road. Either you will have less money when you retire, or you will have to contribute more when you are back on your feet to catch up. That is living in a responsible world. But Tim Bishop doesn’t live in a responsible world. He lives in an entitlement world which means he hands out goodies to buy votes and when later comes, he won’t be around to answer for it. He will be too busy admiring some post office that got named after him for his dedicated service.

The payroll tax is basically robbing from Social Security. There is no choice involved. If you had your own plan you would have the liberty to decide if you wanted to cut back on contributions to your retirement or not. Some would, some might not. There is nothing being discussed in Congress to increase the payroll tax once the Obama administration stops killing the recovery. Again, if there were private plans, you could decide to pay more into the plans when you are working again. There is nothing being discussed in Congress to decrease future benefits to make up for the shortfall in contributions. Once more, if you had a private plan those would be options you would be at liberty to choose among. Instead we have this from The New York Times:

Democrats could count far more policy victories in the bill: the payroll tax break will not be paid for, large changes that Republicans sought to the unemployment insurance program were not realized, and the program was extended far beyond what the opposing party sought.

Did you get that folks? It is a victory for Democrats that we don’t pay for this so that the Social Security problem that President Obama so scrupulously avoided in his latest budget fantasy just gets kicked down the road. What we really need to do is kick Tim Bishop and the rest of his Democrat colleagues in the House and the do-nothing Democrats in the Senate under Harry Reid out of Congress. Let’s replace them with grown-ups who will make the tough choices to get us back on the same track for the good of the country rather than their personal self-interest.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

President Barack Obama has a new budget. So it’s time to suspend reality and listen and nod your head and pine for four more years.

President Obama promised in 2009 to halve the deficit by the end of his first term. The last fiscal year budget deficit under Bush was $482 billion. In the four years of Obama’s first term it has yet to be less than $1 trillion. As former New York City Mayor Ed Koch used to asks his constituents, “How’m I doing?”

So while Obama’s new budget promises another trillion plus deficit, but don’t worry he will cut $4 trillion in spending over the next ten years. Never mind that even if he is reelected 60% of that timeline is beyond his control. It should also be pointed out that $4 trillion over ten years is only $400 billion a year, which leaves another $600 billion to be added to the national debt each year.

If that is not smoke and mirrors enough, that $4 trillion includes $1.5 trillion in tax increases. Why does this president and his backers insist that we have to take more money from the production of America’s citizens to cover his spending, rather than cutting his spending to fit within the available revenues?

For his first two years in office he worked with a Democrat controlled Congress. He got everything he asked for and everything is worse. We have staggering debt despite his promises to cut the deficit in half, unemployment worse than when he took office despite his promises to that his stimulus would cap unemployment at 8%, we have ObamaCare striking right at the heart of the First Amendment and he basically says, “get over it.”

Enough is enough. The experiment failed. It is time to cut this man loose and start working to repair the enormous damage he has done.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Congressman Tim Bishop continues to push his manufactured campaign issue, with the full union backing of the Communication Workers of America, to fight against outsourced call centers. He calls it a “surgical strike”. I think there are more appropriate names for it.

It’s always fun to listen to someone who hasn’t spent a day outside of academia or government tell the rest of us, a) what the problem is; and b) what the solution is. The first question that I would ask Congressman Bishop is “why is this such an important issue for your constituents?” Answer: It isn’t. There are no major call centers in his district and there are none that I know of that are weighing a move to his district. So why is this his major legislative focus?

He is desperately looking for an issue, any issue, that he can campaign on. He cannot campaign on his record. He cannot campaign on a record of supporting the Obama economic disaster. He cannot campaign on how much the debt ballooned on his watch. So Doctor Bishop wants to do a little surgery and penalize companies who outsource call centers. Since Bishop never held a job that produced anything for a profit he can be excused for not grasping the impacts of his proposed bill.

One of his provisions is to make companies that have outsourced call center jobs overseas ineligible for government contracts. Two of the largest US PC manufactures HP and Dell and they both have call centers overseas. So does Congressman Bishop want the stop the federal government from buying PCs from HP and Dell? Who should they buy them from? Chinese Lenovo, Taiwan based Acer? Japan’s Toshiba? Speaking like a general he says it is a surgical strike. Well surgical strikes are designed to limit collateral damage, and Bishop’s plan is chock full of collateral damage.

Here is how Bishop could really help the situation. First, take a basic economics course. Study how the global economy works and how free global trade helps everyone. Perhaps he should ask his backers at the Communications Workers of America, what they can do to make call centers in the US more cost-effective. Do they have too many work rules in their contracts? Do they force their members to pay union dues to pay for the union to back Bishop and Obama? If their dues were limited to collective bargaining, perhaps employers could afford more call center jobs in the US. Tell Obama we need to slash the corporate tax rate so that companies do not save billions of dollars by locating operations in overseas countries with lower tax rates and then trap those profits overseas so they can’t be brought back to create jobs here.

But that may be too much to ask of Mr. Bishop before November. So here’s a better idea. Step down, and let someone who has actually created jobs take your place.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

President Obama, always on the campaign trail, is now on the road trying to explain why his class warfare strategy is not class warfare. In his State of the Union address, he once again invoked the “Buffett Rule”, which is little more than a fig leaf to allow Obama to raise taxes. But what about some other “Buffett Rules”?

Spending

What is the Buffett Rule on spending? Does Warren Buffett agree with President Obama that we should spend 150% of what we take in? Did Warren Buffett become one of the richest men on the planet by spending 150% of what he takes in and borrowing the shortfall? I think Buffett’s counsel would be to live within our means; don’t spend more than you take in, but I didn’t hear President Obama invoke the “Oracle of Omaha” when he submitted his budget to the Senate that was voted down 97-0. I didn’t hear Obama mention spending at all other than to say some nonsense about cutting spending by $2 trillion over ten years. At the rate we are going that level of spending “cuts” will mean we are $8 trillion deeper in debt ten years from now rather than $10 trillion. We need to cut $1 trillion in spending next year. So let’s hear what Buffett has to tell Obama about spending.

Investing

Warren Buffett is regarded as a masterful investor. What’s the Buffett Rule on investing? President Obama took credit for saving the auto industry. Really? If that is his idea of a good investment why does the price of GM stock have to rise to $52 before the American people’s investment to break even? GM stock is currently trading around $25. How many people are expecting GM’s stock to double in the near future? Or is it more likely that union contracts will once again, drag GM beneath the waves? My research indicates that Warren Buffett does not hold any GM stock. I wonder why? I do know that Warren Buffett made a very tidy profit by investing in Goldman Sachs. Meanwhile American taxpayers, you know, the ones who are under taxed, bailed out that company and many others. How much did Buffett invest in Solyndra? How much money is Warren Buffett investing in high-speed rail in California? Why should the American people believe that someone who has never held a job in private industry (Obama) is suddenly the smartest venture capitalist in America? How big of a portfolio do the real venture capital firms put in the hands of new hire fresh out of college? But this president takes billions of our tax dollars and squanders them on his pet projects and then lectures us how we need to invest in our future when they go belly up. When is Warren Buffett going to tell him to stop?

The Buffett Rule on Taxes

At the State of the Union address we were introduced to the famous secretary of Warren Buffett. She’s the poor woman who pays a higher tax rate than Mr. Buffett on her income. It is estimated that the poor dear makes between $200,000 and $500,000, otherwise she would not be paying double the tax rate of Buffett. That could put her solidly in the top 1% of earners in the country, if she is at the high-end of that range (the top 1% is earnings above $343,000). So Barack Obama actually lamenting that the top 1% is over taxed? Of course not. It is not about who is paying too much, it is about who is not paying enough.

The problem is spending, plain and simple. There are not enough rich people in America, even if taxed at 100% to close the budget gap. What Obama is doing is class warfare. Let’s get people angry enough at the wealthy so that Obama can then link the wealthy to the Republicans and sneak back into a second term.

If Obama thinks he is playing by the rules, Buffett’s rules, then he should at least play by all of them.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Rick Santorum timed the wave perfectly and rode it to within eight votes of Romney in the Iowa caucuses. Whether it was timing or real support is not certain, but where does he go from here, and I don’t mean geographically?

In the 1964 Olympic 10,000 meter race there was an American named Billy Mills. Back in those days they ran on a cinder track and after a while the track would get chewed up and you would lose a little push on each step, sort of like how it feels running on the soft sand of the beach compared to the packed, wet sand down by the water. Toward the end of the race there was some jostling and Mills got bumped out a couple of lanes, but he found firmer footing there and started gaining ground, ultimately taking the gold medal. Rick Santorum in Iowa reminds me a bit of Mills. He chose to run on social issues, while the other candidate focused on economic issues. This gave Santorum some traction with those voters who felt strongly on those issues. But to quote former Clinton adviser James Carville, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Santorum’s strategy gained for him one of the coveted “tickets out of Iowa.” Well done. But that strategy won’t carry him very far in the nominating process, and definitely not in the general election. He needs to shift his focus to the economy and come up with something bold, if he hopes to beat Romney. If you go to Santorum’s web site and dig a little he has some sensible economic proposals, but they are too timid. If he want’s to beat Romney he needs to put more daylight between him and his opponent’s plans.

For example, he calls for cutting $5 trillion over five years. Mathematically that may not be very different from Ron Paul’s cutting $1 trillion in one year, but if so, just say it. Who knows if Santorum will be around in five years if he was to get elected and in Washington all spending cuts seem to come at the back-end of any time period, while tax increases always happen now. It didn’t take Obama five years to find a way to add more to the national debt than every president since Washington, combined, so why should it take five or ten years to unwind that disaster?

On taxes, he needs to be bold. If you read the tax policies on his website, it is a tweak here and a tweak there. Cain, Gingrich, and Perry all had bold plans. Scrap the IRS and you will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the economy, without raising a nickel in taxes. It may increase unemployment among tax preparers, accountants and lawyers, but that will be more than offset by businesses adding jobs with resulting from their new-found windfall. Eliminate the payroll tax. Congress has revealed what a fraud that is by creating a payroll tax holiday and then saying the Social Security Trust Fund will not face any shortfall. Why have multiple tax structures and mechanisms and associated bureaucracy if Treasury will just shuffle the money around as they see fit anyway? Why not pick up Cain’s 9-9-9 plan? Cain is out of the race, but Santorum would almost immediately pick up Cain’s support and many of his followers. Hell, for that matter, he should be even bolder and ask Cain to be his running mate if nominated.

Without a stark choice, Romney will probably end up the nominee. If Romney doesn’t start convincing conservatives that he has mended his ways, they may choose to stay home, but if they do, I don’t want to hear any griping about Obama if he gets reelected. If Santorum is bold, it will force Romney to be a little bolder to protect his right flank. If nothing else, we need whoever is the nominee to be battle hardened for the general election. This one won’t be pretty.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

In his recent telephone town hall meeting, Tim Bishop expressed his support for the continued payroll tax holiday but making it clear that it would have no impact on the Social Security Trust Fund. Money for Social Security would continue to go into the trust fund from other sources. What other sources you might ask? I may have an answer for you.

In an article in HousingWire magazine, the author points out that:

The Federal Housing Finance Agency will increase guarantee fees on single-family mortgage-backed securities charged by the government-sponsored enterprises by 10 basis points effective April 1, 2012, in response to the new funding mechanism for the payroll tax cut extension passed by Congress.

So it seems that the Social Security Trust fund will get its money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or more accurately, from new home buyers. So for a two month extension of the payroll tax holiday that will prevent taxpayers from paying an additional $130 into the Social Security Trust Fund, that everyone expects to get back anyway, new home buyers will have to pay thousands in new fees.

The g-fee increase will remain in effect through Oct. 1, 2021. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the g-fees would offset about $35.7 billion in the costs of the tax cut. Mortgage Bankers Association CEO David Stevens said the increase could mean an extra $4,000 in fees on a $200,000 mortgage.

One of the problems facing Long Island is affordable housing. Our young people are leaving Long Island for areas were there is a larger rental stock that they can start out in, rather than living in mom and dad’s basement, and where they can afford to buy a house after saving a down payment for a couple of years. Apparently for the benefit of a political talking point Tim Bishop votes to slam an already weak housing marking with additional fees. After all who can really call a two month anything sound fiscal policy? Notice there is no spending cut mentioned here, it is an increase in taxes and fees. This is what Tim Bishop was telling his constituents not to worry about in his town hall meeting? What will become of his district, if nobody lives here but retirees? Is that his plan to solve the unemployment problem? Drive enough young people away until the number of jobs fits the remaining population?

The problem is spending. It was only last week that Joe Biden was attacking Mitt Romney’s policies by saying:

“His proposal would actually double down on the policies that caused the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression and accelerated a decades-long assault on the middle class,” Biden added.

Decades long assault on the middle class? I guess he means you too, Bill Clinton. The greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression has been the Obama administration and if he were to get reelected it would finish America off. We have had the worst consistent unemployment since the Great Depression for the entire Obama administration. We have had the worst record of job creation, loss actually, since Herbert Hoover. The National Bureau of Economic Research says the recession ended in June of 2009. Does it feel like it to you? Most recoveries from economic downturns are mirror images of the slump. A gradual recession is followed by a gradual recovery; a sharp downturn is followed by a sharp upswing. Not this time. Just look at the job creation record of Team Obama.

This chart goes all the way back to Harry Truman and Obama’s performance stands alone.  Let’s put to rest the “eight years of failed Bush policy, yada, yada, yada” and face the fact that Obama and his spending, heavy-handed regulations, and insatiable appetite to fix everything by taxing more has put us into an economic winter. Tim Bishop has happily ignored the needs of his constituents to buy favor from the Democratic leadership and their special interest pals. They have done an awful job and we need to turn them out, before they turn us into Greece.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

With the economy in shambles and his campaign sound bites and early interviews as president coming back to haunt him, President Obama has ramped up the class warfare rhetoric. Let’s put the lie to these strategies.

The Payroll Tax Cut

The issue here is that President Obama wants to help the middle class and he claims the Republicans do not. The famous payroll tax cut puts about $8 a week in the pocket of individuals. But everyone who pays the payroll “tax” expects to get every dollar back, and then some, after they retire. So what is really going on here? The government forces you to participate in the Social Security system. It offers a lousy rate of return compared to alternatives and if you die before you start collecting, everything you paid into it is gone. Your heirs get nothing. If Obama believes in cutting back on payroll taxes, why not convert everything to private accounts and eliminate the tax altogether? Let people save for their own retirement. Let them put more away in the good times, and be able to scale back in the bad times.

The Republicans are not opposed to Obama’s plan, their only requirement is that we cut somewhere else in the budget to make up for the shortfall. This is nothing new. Former Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning raised this very point nearly two years ago, when the Democrats held both houses of Congress. In this enormous government can’t we find anything to cut? Find the cuts and the Republicans will sign on. If not, this is just another case of piling debt on our children and grandchildren, because they will have to make up the difference when we retire.

Taxing the Rich

This week we saw former senator and former New Jersey governor, Jon Corzine testify before Congress to say how sorry he was that he couldn’t find over a billion dollars of his customer’s money. But since he resigned from MF Global he doesn’t have access to any of the records to help in the search. Is the Justice Department beginning a criminal investigation?

Has anyone been charged with a crime for what happened in the fiscal meltdown of 2008? Has anyone collected more campaign cash from Wall Street than Obama? So is it unusual to conclude that President Obama, other than giving speeches, is perfectly fine with Wall Street ripping off the American people, as long as he can rip off the most successful people in America and claim he is looking out for the little guy. Let his pals get boatloads of government money to bail out their companies so they can keep getting richer and then say he wants to tax them more. Is it any surprise that a lot of rich Democrat supporters are coming out and saying they are all for paying more. Who wouldn’t?

President Obama says you can have billions of tax dollars and I just want a kickback in the form of higher taxes so that I can keep spending recklessly. However, ask anyone of these guys to write a check to the Treasury voluntarily, and they all balk. Why? Nobody gets any credit for donating their money to the government. They want the government to take it, not just from them but from every successful business person.

An Economic Winter

If President Obama gets another term, we may face an economic winter from which we may never recover. If the last three years were painful, the next four could be even worse.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.